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Charging Washington `Betrayal,' Pyongyang Kills Peninsula Talks

January 06, 2000|By From Tribune News Services.

NORTH KOREA — A senior North Korean diplomat said Wednesday that high-level talks in Washington were canceled because the United States had carried out unspecified acts of "betrayal" against his country.

Chu Chang Jun, North Korea's ambassador to China, also insisted that South Korea scrap an espionage law and end military relations with the U.S. and Japan before the rival Koreas hold a summit.

Washington has been trying to entice North Korea to raise current contacts, which now are carried out mostly at the vice foreign minister level, to improve ties and to persuade Pyongyang to abandon a long-range missile program.

Chu said Pyongyang had been prepared to send senior officials to the U.S. until Washington committed "acts of betrayal against our country."

Chu said North Korea remains interested in a summit, but it said Seoul must abolish its national security law--"which criminalizes contacts between the North and South"--dissolve its National Intelligence Service and cancel military contacts and war games with the U.S. and Japan.